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Monday, 3 December 2012

I have a feeling I've written before
about missing the fucking point. Surely it must have come up, at
least once in this blog, that far from being the respectable face of
Literature, Shakespeare was a filthy minded bastard writing for a
group of people who were considered little better than whores? That
theatre, far from being an institution, was something known to
contemporaries as 'The Anti-Christ's lewd hat'1?

This actually hasn't come up?

Nah, it must have done.

So, I shan't bang on about tidying up
the past, about assuming things were simpler and more respectable
than they were2.
I shan't make a fuss about the mistaken concept that those really
pretty clothes confer some kind of moral value upon a time period, I
will simply say that I get it.

Honestly, I do get it, this need to
romanticise the past. I get that if we don't romanticise something
we might as well give up now. On a
day-to-day basis, this ability to imagine is sometimes what makes it
worth getting out of bed in the morning.

So, by
all means – enjoy your fiction about Lords and Ladies, lusty
gamekeepers, great artistic genius, the Golden Age of chivalry or
whatever it is that floats your boat. But two small requests? Bear in mind it had fuck all basis in reality. And,
please, please don't
make my sense of irony jump down my throat and drown me in my own
misspent bile.

This
is particularly relevant when it comes to books, and to writers.
There is a significant and important line between “dreamy eyed fan
fic” and “what is actually going on in the fucking novel”. Of
course, Henry Tilney is the perfect man, and life would be a much so
much duller if I... *ahem*, I mean one... couldn't
indulge in the odd teenage style daydream complete with anachronistic
attitudes to gender and pre-marital sex. However, one really should remember that – while it is about marriage - Northanger
Abbey is far more satire
than romance. Have as many wet dreams as you
like about Fitzwilliam Darcy but do take care to remember that Austen
was an acerbic and potentially cynical woman. And don't buy this.
Please, don't buy this:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/115163054/honoring-jane-austen-this-pillow?ref=v1_other_2

However
that particular travesty of literary interpretation is not the reason
for this little rant. Not even slightly. No, this weekend past I
found myself back in my old stomping ground of North Kent and
managed, somewhat against my intentions, to wander into the centre of
Rochester in the middle of its Dickensian Christmas extravaganza.

Now,
Rochester is very proud
of Dickens and, while he's not my personal cup of tea, I do think
it's nice that a local writer gets the full treatment of adoration
and civic display3.
So, for one weekend only, Rochester turned out into its Victorian
best. Crinolines abounded. The odd Gothic minded young women did a
passable (and potentially inadvertent) impression of a demi-mondaine.
Soldiers wore those terribly impractical but wonderfully smart red
uniforms4,
and one wanker missed the point entirely and turned up with a pair of
goggles on his topper5.

Okay,
there were very few rickets. There was no ostentatious penury, infant
mortality or displays of brutality. There were not even the
plimsolled, soot-faced waifs that frequent May's Sweeps' Festival6.
And, yes, omitting all these is to downplay Dickens' role as a
writer pushing for social reform but, I'll concede that good clean
fun and late 19th
Century conditions of deprivation are perhaps mutually exclusive. Then I saw it. Letters three feet high, blazoned across a refreshment
marquee:

Wednesday, 10 October 2012

It's very rare for a book to make me
cry. It's very rare for something even to come close.

Same
goes for films, television, whatever. There are a few things, there
are moments when I get mawkish and sentimental,1
there are the few guaranteed tearjerkers in the world, but when my
contemporaries were sobbing buckets over poor old Cedric Diggory, the
best I could manage was a shrug. “Kill the spare”, splat –
well, quite. If you insist.

In
fact, I've always had a bit of beef with J.K about that whole
business. Sure, she killed Sirius Black, and she killed him totally
unfairly2,
but in the last book she promised us a Weasley. Go on, then, I
thought – she's not going to do for Ron, but Ginny maybe? Or
Arthur. Definitely Arthur.

Fred? You
what?

Okay.
Better Fred than George3.
You whack the Weasley who's got a double? What a bloody cop out.

Now,
this, I'll admit, makes it sound as though I've a vendetta against
everyone's favourite red-headed clan, but I've not. I like the
Weasleys. Sod it, I like Fred. I'm talking about storytelling. From
book four onwards, Harry Potter is filled with a cast of likeable,
entertaining supporting characters who are murdered in the gradually
escalating bloodbath that culminates in the battle for Hogwarts. Not
Harry though. Not Ron, or Hermione or Hagrid. Not even Ginny, or
Neville or Dean. No, it's Cedric, Sirius, Dumbledore, Dobby, Tonks,
Lupin, Fred -everyone
outside our enchanted little circle of main characters and their
immediate friends. Flat-pack tragedy. Kill the spare.

If you
had asked me who my favourite, favourite writer
was when I was twelve years old, my response would have been without
hesitation. Robin Jarvis. No, he's not as good a writer as Garner,
nor as clever as Pullman, but he taught me one very valuable thing
about storytelling.

Don't
kill the spare.

No,
wait, scrap that. Don't just kill
the spare.

For
those of you who aren't acquainted with Jarvis' work and doubt the
veracity of this statement, Jarvis' best known series can be
summarised thus: a faintly mythic bloodbath inhabited by
anthropomorphic animals.

You
got a favourite character? It's dead4.
A favourite place? Razed. A favourite people? Massacred. There was a
kind of glee in it, murder, murder, murder, mayhem, black magic and
death. No, Jarvis wasn't killing his darlings, dear, he was killing
yours. Of course, it
wouldn't have worked if it had just been unremitting blackness5
- he played the heartstrings, but not too much. He pulled no punches.

Sometimes,
though, he pulled something else, though: a fast one.

Which
brings me onto our next point. Fast ones are great. I love fast ones.
The end of The Whitby Series is
one hell of a fast one. In fact, it's a whole sequence of fast ones.
The Alchemist's Cat is
still, to my mind, one of the best fast ones ever pulled. And
sometimes the fast one is the way out – don't just kill the spare,
kill the darling. Then bring them back.

They're
great, fast ones. Every now and then they do stop something turning
into an outright rout. They bring a little bit of lightness, of joy
back to your reader's world. They promise to drive the nail in, to
make the incision, only to pull back at the last minute. It's okay,
chaps. Everything will be just peachy.

Which
is all well and good, but they undermine what I see to be the first
rule of storytelling. Don't try to please
your
reader. You are not a little child, trying to persuade a strict
caregiver to provide sweets. You do not need to pander to their
little whims. You are a writer,
FFS.
Within the little confines of your book, your world, your script,
your whatever, you are GOD, and you do not need to be a nice one.
When you pull a fast one, your readers should feel nothing other than
sheer, bleeding relief. “Thank fuck,” should be what they are
whispering to themselves. “I care. I care. I care.” And to get
that reaction, you cannot pull them all the time6.

That's
the thing about fast ones. They are throwing your reader the sponge,
giving them the sticking plaster. They are kissing them, making it
all better. If you always do it, bring your character to the edge of
jeopardy, and pull them back at the last minute, your readers won't
believe harm can really come to them. Your readers will slip inside a
cosy little fantasy where everything will be okay. You stop being a
cruel and implacable God and become a parent – scooping your reader
up before they get to where the real darkness lives.

Don't
do this. Do not get sentimental, do not make the red jerseys. Simply
kill! Kill! KILL!

Ahem.

Sorry.

Which
brings me to Susan Hill. She knows what its like, the punches are the
things that she does not pull. I was never expecting any tenderness.
About five chapters into The
Various Haunts of Men I
said to myself, “If she does not kill Character X, I am going to be
so disappointed.” Character X was charming, lovable, even.
Character X was engaging, sympathetic, central. Character X was not
the spare.

By
the end of the novel, I was begging for her to pull a fast one. Let X
off, I prayed, just this once.

Sunday, 30 September 2012

So that's that, then. For those who
have followed me on my epic, twitter sarcasm spree, I stand before
you, the only person living who has read the whole of Varney, The
Vampyre.

I don't say that
lightly. As far as I'm aware, most versions only bother to print up
to chapter 96 or so, and just leave the rest of the tome blank. Even
the scholarly preface in my edition mentions nothing which occurs
after Volume II. Alone. I am alone.1 The rest of you quit weeks ago.

If I'm honest, I
can't say I blame you. As a novel, this does not hang together. I
guess it's only human to give up when it becomes clear that not even
the author had any real clue what was going to happen next, nor,
indeed, what had happened previously. It's only human, after all, to want
a story with a cohesive plot, a small cast of characters who each have clear
goals, drives and motives. There is no
place in modern literature for enormous, meandering
doorstop tomes that allow themselves to indulge every little whim and
silly joke that takes their fancy. Hand on heart, I can see your
point entirely.

You fucking
lightweights.

It rocks. Once you
stop worrying about such trifling concerns as plot, character
consistency, or direction it is enormous fun to read. In fact, it is
1166 pages of perfect delight. Let me reiterate. 1166 pages of
AWESOME. Plus, the character arc of Sir Francis is fascinating. Okay,
I will concede that, like the character arc of the Doctor in the
classic series, it does need to be back engineered by a diligent fan,
but still...

Actually,
classic series Doctor Who is
what this most resembles. Take one innovative, brilliant idea, (Time
travel, for example, or Vampires) and enigma of a main character (say, The Doctor or Sir
Francis) an initial problem (perhaps two schoolteachers getting kidnapped by an irascible time traveller, or an ancient family being stony broke) and GO. It will take you all
kinds of places, raise all kinds of issues, have micro-stories within
it (some of which have insane loose ends, others of which could do with
a bit of pruning) create contradictions, paradoxes, and have the most
charming, changeable, quixotic and prevaricating main character you
will ever encounter.

Stick
with it and you'll come to see the guiding principle, nay, the sheer
bloody joy of Varney, the Vampyre
has fuck all to do with a novel
as we currently understand it. It's not about vampires, not really,
it's about people and the silly things we do, and how easy we are to manipulate. And what it does, in the simplest and purest form is bytake every possible permeation of the vampire genre that
you have ever encountered and run with it.

That's
what I say; there has been nothing original since this. Not ever. Not
at any point2.

So, go
on, give it one more chance. We can do this together. In the next couple of weeks I'll be posting The
Hitch-hiker's Guide to Varney the Vampyre, breaking
it down into its distinct episodes in order to encourage and amuse
the intrepid Varney
reader. It may have many omissions, contain much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, but it will tell you highlights, central cast, genre and all the marvels of this much maligned novel - and all for
less than thirty Alterian Dollars a day.

It'll
be like Spark Notes, only sweary.

Don't
forget your towel.

1If
you have actually read the whole shebang, then do say so in the
comments. We rule. We should have T-shirts. Actually, we do have
t-shirts. See?

Saturday, 8 September 2012

This, I promise, is true: Last time I read The Alderley Books, I had an idea for a short story. It would be about Colin. He would have become an academic, and, tied to Alderley, he would search for his lost sister.

It's not been twelve years since I read The Moon of Gomrath, no. It's not even been twelve years since I first read The Moon of Gomrath, I was... I don't know. In Primary school. A long time ago. It was twelve years ago, with all the hormones of the menarche screaming around me that I realised what happens at the end of that book, that I understood what Susan does, what Susan feels....

It needed a sequel - but that sequel is called adulthood, and it takes its time in coming.

And Alan Garner?

Let's go back to me at eights year old* - book crazy and myth addled. I always knew, though, the difference between reality and fiction - not for me the banging at the back of wardrobes trying to get passage to Narnia. For a start I knew the books too well: My wardrobe wasn't made from apple wood brought from the creation of
Narnia now, was it? The rings were always a more reliable way of
travelling between the worlds. But anyway, they were an allegory. Of course I played at Narnia, but I never expected to be whisked away there. Now, Robin Jarvis, he was a bit different. There's a nightmarish quality to his books which made them all too plausible, and sometimes I woke in a cold sweat because of them, but they were fictional. Some part of me always knew that they were fictional.

But The Weirdstone? The Owl Service?

No. No, they weren't fiction at all.

They were landscape. They were myth.

Even that young, I could tell the difference.

As I say, I've waited twelve years for this.

To put it simply, this is what it is:
When we are children, we have an immediacy of connection with that world; we fight alongside dwarfs, we battle witches. The world is bright, fierce and inhabited. There is good and there is evil and we pick our sides and we reap the consequences.

When we reach adolescence, the older magic begins to be unbound in our bodies and our hearts. Terrifying, it defies classification or morality. We yearn, but it races, too fast, too hot, too dangerous. There are no sides, not any more.

Then there is adulthood. We cannot see, cannot even remember that it has a face. We cannot touch it so directly, but it is more powerful, latent in the landscape. The high magic becomes nothing more than futile artifice, its boundaries false, its presence merely fading injunctions. The wild hunt has flown. There is an older magic still, one without words, without personalities, and it has many meanings and no meanings at all. Everything is grey. Everything is bone. Everything is the Earth.

This is not fiction. Not fiction at all. This is landscape. This is myth.

Wednesday, 5 September 2012

So, another year rolls round, and there
is another best-selling book, read mainly by women, that we are
getting told off for enjoying1.
The reasons we are given are plentiful, but familiar: poor writing, slushy plot and a weak female lead.
You know, a silly little bimbo who lets herself get pushed around,
subscribes to a totally self-sacrificing ideal of love and ends up...

Actually, this is just far too boring.
Go and look on any one of a million websites and you'll get some
version of this diatribe in full. In fact, we heard it all last time
anyway. I, for one, can't be bothered. Not getting involved, not
interested. The reason I'm standing well back from it this time round can be traced
to two female protagonists from books that are both acknowledged
Classics2
and can therefore be safely discussed without anyone getting too
vehement.3

So, two names: Jane Eyre and Fanny
Price.

Let's start with the confession, but please, don't
shoot:

I hate Jane Eyre. It is not only the
single set text from an academic course that I have never actually
finished4,
I failed to finish it on two separate occasions and once even
pulled a sickie to get out having to discuss it in a seminar. It's
not that I can't handle 19th Century fiction (I love 19th
Century fiction) it's that it's a turgid, repressive and oppressive wish fulfilment
fantasy related by a main character with the pizazz and inner
strength of an over-boiled turnip. I first studied it at an all
girl's school, and our gushing teacher burbled incessantly about how
virtuous, how committed, how inspirational a
main character was dear, sweet Jane. I could just see them force feeding us this stuff, trying to get us to toe the line, behave in the acceptable way. I called b/s. I'll admit it, I ranted, and I
swore to anyone who would listen and I dissected that
novel to prove my point. I did exactly the kind of thing that
this blog post is complaining about, because it got right under my skin.

Then, a couple of year later, this happened:

I gave myself a
holiday treat by reading all of Austen's novels, and was just about
to start Mansfield Park. My
mum, the consummate Austen fan5,
looked at it and smirked. “Have you started reading that yet?”
She asked.

“No,”
I responded, all innocence.

“Oh,
you are going to love Fanny
Price.”

And
I'll tell you something. I did. I liked Fanny,6
I respected Fanny, I was glad7
Fanny got her man. Okay, she wasn't so much fun
as Austen's other heroines, but she was sincere, committed, and
determined. No matter what might happen, she would not compromise
herself, her beliefs, or her limits; even under pressure, even when there was no hope.
What's more, she got what she wanted. Okay, she could have done better, but, hey, what's so great about giving up what we actually want
based upon some arbitrary value system concerning life choices?

Good
for Fanny Price! Three cheers! An inspiration!

Then I
started reading some literary criticism.

Oh
dear.

Turns
out people were saying of Fanny the same things that I had been
saying about Jane8.
Oppressive. Wish fulfilment. Pizazz and inner strength of an
over-boiled turnip (okay, not in those exact
words...) These people, they had quotes too; they too had dissected the
novel, pulled out bits and pieces to support themselves (“Out of
context!” I cried.) Some of them even compared Fanny negatively to
Jane, for Jane is liberated, has strength of mind, makes her own way
in the world, does not compromise... I'll admit at times, I started to wonder if there had
been some kind of bizarre mix-up in the heads of these people, and
they had got the names the wrong way round.

But
then I started talking to other readers, and reading articles about books and found that people I respect were saying Jane Eyre had moved them, had driven them,
solaced them. People, women, were
saying that Jane had been, on some level, their liberator – or at
least a friend in their struggle. So I tried to read it
again and could still see nothing more than a narrator incapable of
either ducking or dissembling when a man is about to hurt her9.
Then, reader, she marries him – you know, the repulsive, broke one
who kept his last wife in an attic for years.

That
was when the realisation came to me: this is literary criticism,
darlings. We can all be right.

That's
not to say all opinions are equally correct, some after all are
patently wrong. This, though, is usually based upon a misunderstanding . An example of this might be a misapprehension regarding the word 'ejaculate' in that lovey dovey scene
between Jane and Rochester in the garden. Such an interpretation of
that scene would be... interesting... but not exactly worthy of serious attention. Others, while
valid and interesting, take a certain perverse inspiration and a
degree of stubbornness. One is reminded of the four hours I spent
arguing that the events of Dracula are
a collective delusion, and the essay where I stated that the thing of
the Count's that Mina is sucking? It's not blood. Yes, it was
enormously good fun, especially that last one, but really? No,
neither of those are what happen in the novel.

Still,
with an honest reading of something, when we respond naturally to the
characters and get involved with the plot, there is actually no
wrong response. So, something in me didn't get on with Jane Eyre and
still doesn't. Other people can't stand Fanny Price. So what? We each bring to
a book our own set of experiences and values, so that certain things
trigger us in certain ways – certain aversions, certain sympathies.
We all take away something from a book which shapes us and our future
actions.

In
Fanny Price, I saw a young woman who knew what she wanted, however
unobtainable, and would not be swayed from that course by the glamour
of something 'better'. Sometimes, when I face certain people and
decisions, I look to Miss Price10
for her strength and resolution. In Jane Eyre, though, I saw a young
woman who faced bullies and let them hurt her, let them break her.
That will not be me.

Other
people, I appreciate now, feel that should be the other way around. Fair enough - that's their response. I have not changed my mind, but I have stopped hurling the insults. A character is strong in the strength she confers and the characters from whom we draw strength are our own business. If
one11
shy, lonely, unhappy teenage girl looks at Bella Swan and thinks,
“It's okay. Adolescence ends. The things that scare me won't be scary forever,” then surely, for all the problems you personally see in the
book, it can't be all bad.

I'm
not saying don't argue about interpretations of books– for Gods' sakes, that's the fun of lit
crit – what I'm saying is put down the pitchforks.

1No.
I've not read it. I'm not going to. If I want erotica, I have Lost
Girls and the works of Angela
Carter.

For those of you who have successfully avoided my Twitter ramblings on the subject, Sir Francis is (probably) not the Bannerworths' ancestor - that was all a cunning ploy to freak the hell out of them. He still thinks he's a vampyre, though, and I guess Varney, the Slightly Delusional wouldn't sell so many books.

Actually, while we're on the topic, I wanted to include something about the barefaced cheek of calling a
novel Varney, The Vampyre and failing to commit to there actually being a
vampyre until chapter 104, but I couldn't make it scan. And, for all my bluster, this is still the most entertaining thing I've read in ages.

Oh, and I still fancy Sir Francis like crazy, but that's a topic for another day, when you have supplied yourself with earplugs.

3The
meaning of this word should be self-evident, but for the terminally
slow: A plot-tease is a writer who keeps promising a revelation,
explanation, or indeed, event but consistently fails to produce any
of the above.

4No.
Again. Not kidding. Like James Bond, but slower and more pointless.

Monday, 30 July 2012

Let's start this blog post with a lie and say that it's not very often that there is a book I'm actually so excited about I will rush out to buy it the moment I hear about it.

There. I said it would be a falsehood. If I'm honest, there have been at least three instances this year where I've got all screamy-fan-girl about a recently published novel. What does surprise me, though (considering that I am the same individual who camped outside her local Waterstones to in order be the first person to buy The Prisoner of Azkaban, indeed, doing sobefore said business had made any provision for such pre-teen nut-cases) is that I don't spend my spare time loitering on the websites of my favourite authors, hitting refresh every 15 minutes*. Instead, these days, I'm content to let the ether (or, you know, Twitter) waft towards me the news that a long anticipated novel is about to be released.

The reason for this is probably disappointment. No matter how blindingly awesome a book might be, if you've hyped yourself up to the point of squatting in a bookshop's doorway about it, there is a good chance that the final product may not quite live up to your highest of hopes. These days I try to preserve my enjoyment of things by taking things at a slightly steadier pace. And, despite this, The Prisoner of Heaven still disappointed me.

For those of you who don't know Ruiz Zafón's work, The Prisoner of Heaven is the third in a loose cycle of novels set in Barcelona and revolving around a place called The Cemetery of Forgotten Books. The first two are The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game. In it's actuality, The Prisoner of Heaven is more or less a direct sequel to The Shadow of the Wind; the narrator is the same, one Daniel Sempere, and the events of the novel concern the past of his best friend, Fermín Romero de Torres, as well as revealing some of the mystery surrounding David Martín, the cursed narrator of The Angel's Game. Although the spiel is that these
books can be read in 'any order', I would advise the curious to read at
least one of the earlier books before attempting this one - especially as even the blurb of The Prisoner... advises the reader to 'find out what happens next'.

And that, really, is the main weakness of The Prisoner. The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game were just too bloody good: stand alone novels that drew on each other's themes, intertwined with each other in the cleverest, most elegant of ways. They really can be read in any order, or separately, with no reference to each other at all. The Prisoner... for all it's worth, is not complete in its own right. Unlike in the two earlier novels, the story arc does not complete itself, questions - vital questions - are left unresolved and I get the worrying feeling it's just going to be springboard into the next book in the sequence.

All that said, it's still a cracking good read. The mystery set up and explored is done well, suspense is maintained and Ruiz Zafón gives his usual display of artful storytelling and truly decent human characters without ever flinching from showing us horror, or veering into sentimentality. As far as a novel goes, it's marvellous. Written by any other writer, I would probably be gushing praise and enthusiasm for the style, the plot and the sequel.It lacks, however, the depth and scope of its two prequels, lacks something of their mystery or grandeur. Ruiz Zafón's style seems diminished too: perhaps in search of slicker, harder prose, he has abandoned some of the imagery that pervaded the first too novels, abandoned, too, the intricate, torturous subplots. Some people might consider this a bonus; I just wondered if he had found a different translator**.

Actually, because of the 'tighter' language, the lack of lyricism, I found it difficult to believe that the Daniel Sempere of this novel was quite the same Daniel Sempere of The Shadow of the Wind. Of course, he is older here, has a wife and son, and he is less naive, also - aware of the political darkness surrounding him, aware of the immanent bankruptcy of Sempere & Sons - but his increased worldliness, in my opinion actually undermines the darkness and horror shown in other chapters, as well as his own sympathy as a character. It saddens me also that, while the dangerous and redemptive power of story was still a major theme in this book, he pulled off nothing quite so engaging as the characters of Julián Carax or David Martín.

So, in conclusion, my advice would be to read it and enjoy it because it's still probably one of the better books of 2012, but as to one of the better Ruiz Zafón books? I'm not so sure.

*okay, not that often...
** He hasn't. All three novels are translated by Lucia Graves.

Saturday, 16 June 2012

Bugger, this blog's been a bit neglected, hasn't it? Well, that will change. Can't say when it will change, but it will, at some point. But in the interim, let's have a bit of badly typed silliness.

The thing is, I love my 19th Century vampire fiction so imagine my glee when I received, for my birthday, a copy of the original, the prototype, the penny-dreadful doorstop bloody mess of a vampire novel 'Varney, The Vampyre'. Adore it already! It even has a totally superfluous 'y' in the title! The problem though is the problem I always have - no matter how you dress it up, no matter how ambiguous the ending, Sir Francis is going to lose, isn't he? He will not, alas, get the girl, the house, the treasure that even I've figured out is probably concealed there, and the good guys will win the day because that is what good guys do, especially in 19th Century vampire fiction (except, maybe, in Polidori's 'The Vampyre'.) I, of course, will still be rooting for Sir Francis because championing a lost cause is what I do best.

In fact, I always seem to end up rooting for team vamp. It's not just because they are sexy beasts because tbh, most of them aren't, no. The reason is so much more simple: all too often, the good guys in vampire fiction are just painfully fucking stupid. Part of the problem seems to stem from the fact that the author has to convince us that a group of otherwise rational people have, reluctantly, accepted the existence of vampires as a fact, and have subsequently decided to turn vampire hunter. There are many ways of doing this, but all are based upon the presenting enough evidence to establish said existence beyond all reasonable doubt - the trouble comes with knowing when to stop. Von Klatka, for example, is not only blatantly a vampire from page one, but he is also desperately, sarcastically open about that very fact - when the good guys finally rumble him, I doubt even the original, non-genre savvy audience could entirely suppress a, "well, duh."

'Varney', to my delight, does not trouble itself overmuch with that accumulation of evidence - everyone knows it's a vampire, and that the vamp is Varney from the word go, yet avoiding the most obvious pratfall does not excuse our goodies from monumental levels of idiocy. Therefore, for your delight and delectation, I present a modernisation of Volume One, Chapter 13 - the confrontation between heroic numb-skull Henry Bannerworth and sarcastic vampire Francis Varney - also known as:

Alys Earl

Alys is the last Romantic Poet. When not reading, they are writing. If doing neither, then you'll find them brewing wine, researching folklore or wasting time on Twitter.
These currently neglected blogs deal with books, literary culture, vampires, folklore and historical curiosity. There is probably going to be quite a bit of swearing.
Bewildered by Google+ (why would you do that?) you can normally find them lurking in the backwaters of Twitter, @alysdragon
Their debut novel, Time's Fool, is currently crowdfunding at https://unbound.com/books/times-fool